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Monday, August 31, 2009

Steering Committee & SDIThe Steering Committee is pleased to announce that an SDI proposal was submitted in cooperation with the ANSM. Proposals will be adjudicated on September 18th, and we will let you know as soon as hear whether or not we are successful. Everyone keep your fingers crossed!

Site VisitsDue to some difficulties with car rentals, Karin and the enrichment team have had to share a vehicle for the month of August. Even so, Karin still managed to visit 10 sites in 3 of the 4 regions. Jen & Anna visited 9 sites, providing data enrichment training & assistance.

CHIN Enrichment ProjectLast month you were introduced to Jen & Anna, and asked to submit your art objects for showcasing on Artefacts Canada. Thank you to everyone who has done this. So far we’ve seen carvings of south shore wildlife, watercolour landscapes from the Annapolis Valley, Acadian tapestries, oil paintings of the Cabot Trail …the list goes on and on. But we still need and want to see more!

To get you even more excited about this work, we thought we’d provide an example of this project’s success and potential. Nothing was known about this print before Jen & Anna arrived on-site. Here’s a taste of the information the museum now has about their object:

This handmade, pristine print with exceptional colour, was made for the White Starr-Dominion Line. The British shipping company is known for the devastating loss of the Titanic and also the First World War loss of the Britannica. The print was handmade and has beautiful registration; each layer of coloured ink was perfectly aligned and layed down without smears. The print was made using 4 - 5 colours of ink and was either made from woodblock reliefs or a screen-print. It was made sometime after the First World War, and most likely before 1925. The print has early elements of the art deco style including a bold, simple graphic. The modern, streamlined advertisement echos modern art movements such as Cubism, Futurism, and Bauhaus.

The girls need to know as soon as possible what objects you’d like to learn more about and then showcase on Artefacts Canada, so now is the time for you to select your 20 items and email Jen the list of accession numbers. You can pick more than 20 items if you want, and here are a few ideas on what to submit:1. portraits of early settlers & prominent Nova Scotians2. paintings and prints of the Nova Scotia landscape3. sketches & drawings of local buildings, ships, events etc4. folk art of all shapes and sizes

We’re feeling confident that this will be the best enrichment project yet, so make sure that you don’t miss out on this great opportunity to learn more about the art objects in your collection.

Data CleaningWhile Karin is still on the road there will be a hiatus in data cleaning work. For those few sites still waiting to get this support, she will be in touch in October to get your database and provide this support.

Data Entry Support (aka Melanie’s work)Melanie is approaching the 2/3 mark with Queen's County Museum's records, and is thrilled to report that things are moving much more quickly with this set of records.

Artefacts Canada TallyAlthough we’ve seen continued uploading in August, we didn’t quite match our record of almost 17,000 from July. Most sites now have their entire collection online, and so we are now seeing a much more collective upload. Instead of just a few sites sending up thousands of records at once, we’re seeing fewer new records uploaded from a much broader group of sites. This is exactly what we expected to see following the release of the game plan and initial mass uploading. With 6,309 records going online in August, we now have a grand total of 110,026 records on Artefacts Canada!

Congratulations to the Southwest Region for uploading the most records this month!

Blog PollsWe are still waiting to hear back from many on you about who is doing your data entry work. If you haven’t already, please check out the poll at the bottom of the page and tell us if Staff, Students, Volunteers, or a combination of these are working with the database. This information will be crucial to the Steering Committee as it plans future delivery and support methods.

Monday, August 10, 2009

The Passage Project sought funding to increase the capacity and online profile of 53 community museums through uploading information to Artefacts Canada. Funding was also sought to incorporate three new museums into the group.

The primary objective of uploading information to Artefacts Canada is to increase Passage partners’ online profiles, which will in turn increase their online and on-site visitation numbers and enquiries. This not only increases the level of understanding of their current audience, but reaches out to new visitors, increasing Nova Scotia’s heritage profile as a whole. Sites were encouraged to focus their attention on catalogue records still needing to be entered in the database in order to be able to operate with a full database. It is estimated that there are approximately 225,000 objects in partner museums’ collections, but not all of these have been entered into the databases. Over 20,000 records have been entered over the past 8 months, bringing the total number of entries to over 183,000. To date, 103,744 records have been uploaded, representing 103% of the funding obligation.

The Data Cleaning work provides sites with visible improvements to their databases, along with a report that helps them maintain this consistency in the future, regardless of changes in staff or other issues. Furthermore, it prepares records for uploading to Artefacts Canada so that sites do not have to worry about having unprofessional information made available to the public. To date, 13 sites have received the data cleaning service, representing 87% of the funding obligation. Passage staff continue their efforts to complete this work, obtaining and working on the remaining databases as site visits are conducted, and are confident that it will be finished by the end of the project year (November) if not earlier.

Passage has continued in its partnership with the Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN) in order to increase the number of enriched records on Artefacts Canada and the Virtual Museum of Canada. Focusing on furniture that was either made in Nova Scotia or holds special significance for the partner museum, objects were photographed, researched, and uploaded to Artefacts Canada.To date, 677 records have been enriched. 441 of these have been uploaded with images to Artefacts Canada, representing 88% of the funding obligation.

On top of the limited winter visits, regular site visits began in May. These included a database upgrade, initiation of a Passage game plan for completing database work, and an introduction to Skype so that sites can make free “calls” to support staff when they require assistance. To date, 41 of the 50 site visits have been conducted, representing 82% of the funding obligation. Almost all of the remaining visits have already been scheduled and will be completed by October at the latest.

In April Karin attended the annual conference of the Association of Nova Scotia Museums. She wrote a report of the conference which was forwarded to all partner sites, the ANSM board of directors, Steering Committee, and posted on the blog so that partners could benefit from the event even if they were not able to attend. Karin also attended the regional meetings in April, held in Amherst, Baddeck, Halifax, and Mahone Bay. All of these meetings were very well attended, and provided Passage staff with the opportunity both to hear about what is going on at members’ museums, and also to be able to report face-to-face on Passage activities.

As previously mentioned, a Passage game plan was drafted in order to assist sites in taking a methodical approach to their work. Partner museums reported that they were feeling overwhelmed by the amount of work to be done, and never seemed able to catch up on it. The game plan provides them with small, step-by-step directions on what to focus their attention on, and is designed to give them a functioning database that can then be added to and updated on a regular basis. It also has a companion self-assessment document that allows Passage & museum staff to monitor their progress and see what areas need work. In the short time that it has been in use, project staff have observed a drastic increase in data entry and uploading. Thousands of records have been entered and uploaded over the past two months. Passage staff are formally tracking this activity to compare it to the rate of data entry & uploading in years past, and hope to encourage all parties involved by showing such drastic improvement. The game plan has also been posted to the blog as a permanent resource for partner sites.

Passage was also fortunate to obtain its first-ever centralized volunteer, Melanie Baker. After discussing what work needed to be accomplished, it was decided that the volunteer would provide data entry assistance for sites who have an overwhelming backlog that they have been unable to cope with. Sites applied for this assistance, and the volunteer is now working on an 11-year backlog of data entry for the selected museum. In order to expedite the process, Melanie is strictly adhering to the game plan and only completing step one for the chosen site. After accomplishing this, it will be much easier for them to update and manage their information as time and resources allow.

In cooperation with the Association of Nova Scotia Museums, Passage has also been able to partner with CHIN again for another Collections Development Project. This began in mid-July and is only in the early stages, but this year enrichment work will be done on Art objects in partners’ collections, following the sub-category of Art in the Revised Nomenclature for Museum Cataloguing. The Enrichment Project Officer and Research Assistant will be visiting selected museums to provide on-site training and digitization assistance. Off-site research and further assistance will be provided in order to enrich the catalogue records and ensure that quality information and images will be uploaded to Artefacts Canada.

FUTURE WORK:

In the coming months, Karin will be continuing with site visits, ensuring that all partner sites are on track with the database work, and providing them with the aforementioned Passage game plan to complete the work at a faster pace.

Passage staff and the Steering Committee will continue to be in regular communication with members through phone, email, and the Passage blog (http://passagemuseums.blogspot.com). As mentioned in the last report, the blog has become an integral part of the Passage communication plan, providing members with a way to access past and present updates, notices, and messages from the Steering Committee. It also allows members to comment on the postings and answer questions that help the Steering Committee determine the future direction of Passage. An average of three posts are made per month, so that members are always up-to-date on project activities. New poll questions will be posted every other month so that the Steering Committee will continue to get a much clearer picture of the community and its needs.

As this report has shown, the Passage Project is on track with its funding deliverables, and the Steering Committee and staff are confident that the remaining deliverables will be completed by the end of the project year.